In May 2012, The Alabama Shakes played a main-stage show at
the Hangout Music Fest. Sunday night, the quintet returned to coastal Alabama
for a sold-out performance at the Mobile Saenger Theatre. The two occasions
were equally triumphant, but it was the second that demonstrated just how much this
quintet from Athens, Ala., really has to offer.

In 2012, the questions were straightforward: Could a band
that had been on a six-month rocket ride to international fame live up to the
hype, backing up a few buzzed-about songs with suitably larger-than-life stage
presence? Could a sound built squarely and unapologetically on the soul and R&B
music of half a century ago really hold tens of thousands of young,
flip-flop-wearing listeners?

Yes and yes. The Shakes drew a headliner-size
crowd to their midafternoon set, which figured prominently in many observers'
picks of the festival's best moments.

In 2013, the questions were subtler: In the intervening year,
as the band had gone from success to success, had its unlikely formula become,
well, formulaic? Had it settled into a routine, dispensing measured doses of
retro groove in return for equally measured applause?

No and no.

Sunday night's show wasn't about what songs the band did or
didn't play. It wasn't about meeting expectations. It certainly wasn't about
fancy stagecraft: The group's setup was so minimalist that frontwoman Brittany
Howard and her bandmates (drummer Steve Johnson, guitarist Heath Fogg, bassist
Zac Cockrell and keyboardist Ben Tanner) might have been at work on a Muscle
Shoals studio session rather than a concert.

Sunday night's show was about a command of dynamics that the
Alabama Shakes have gained over the last two years. It was about the ability to
dial back the volume and tempo and simultaneously ratchet up the intensity,
then send the audience surfing across big rolling crescendos. It was about a
strong strain of gospel emerging from the band's more secular influences.

The band's confidence was evident from the beginning.
Playing its breakout single "Hold On," the musicians chugged along in a
languid, almost lazy flow during the verses, then lashed out savagely on the
refrain's cries of "You got to wait!" Instead of call and response it was coil
and release.

The same focus was there near the end, when Howard talked a
little bit about the emotional connection between the band, the music and the
audience. "I don't even have the words, I can't explain it," she said. "I just
try to make you feel it too."

When the band finished its set at about the one-hour mark,
it was evident she had succeeded. The call for an encore was deafening. The
rumble of stomping feet in the balcony was so loud that in the seating underneath,
it sounded as if the building was being pounded by a torrential rain.

The encore, which included a tent revival-worthy version of "You
Ain't Alone," kept them on their feet and gave them what they'd come for: Not
just the songs, not just the sound, but a sense of breaking through to
something bigger.

That's good news, in more ways than one. The group's
sophomore album is on the way, and it's clear the Alabama Shakes aren't simply
about delivering more of the same.